Out Of Touch Retail Stores Still Putting Goods Behind Paywall

They'll never survive being this customer-hostile.

Photo by Clark Street Mercantile on Unsplash

It’s hard to believe, but yes, it happens. Whether it’s traditional upper-body content like shirts or corsets or lower-body content like coolats, pantaloons, or see-through plastic chaps, there are shops out there where they simply have not gotten the message.

Shops, read the economic room already. Money comes from rounds of funding. Not users!

Let your users have as much content as they want, and then, later, find a way to monetize the community when it reaches scale. It blows my mind that I have to explain this to these retailers. Like, have you guys even heard of Silicon Valley?

Sure, these customer-hostile stores often try to make themselves seem a little bit more modern with the “fitting room” situation, but this is, at best, just another soft paywall. If you dare venture out of the walled garden of the “fitting area” all of a sudden the paywall drops down and all the employees are going nuts like a bunch of living pop-up ads.

And even if you try to get into an influencer relationship to smooth things over, they are so not having it. Just try showing them your social media followers. It’s like showing an AI-generated album cover to a tv remote. They act like clout is — get this — not as good as money! (!!!!)¹

Honestly. It’s hard enough being an up and coming influencer. I’m trying to help these people and they just… ugh!

1. !!!!!!!!